This ... is ... KOALA LEAGUE

... otherwise known as Champion I.

I always thought the logo looked a bit too much like a koala, so I was never able to take it very seriously. And if you didn't see it before ... well now you can't un-see it can you?

As a result, reaching the top league doesn't have that same sense of 'coolness' that it otherwise might have had for me. But it is the top league nonetheless.

A string of level 1 bots and other weak opponents meant that I made in without needing to grind very hard at all. And along with those bots and weak opponents, I know that we do not represent the 'ideal' player that should be occupying Champ I (since I 'only' own 2.5 splinters).

It is a bit amusing to see how power creep has manifested with the Untamed series, but also a bit frustrating that as a result, there is not a very substantial 'middle class' player tier. In my mind, 'middle class' refers to the kind of player that puts in $100-$200 per set release, somewhat akin to what M:TG players expect to pay for a booster box. The current environment incentivises people to play either at the very low end of investment or the very high end, with little in-between. And the best rate of financial return seems to be happening at the very low end.

I suspect that - all else remaining equal - much of this would have resolved itself with time, as newer players slowly upgrade their decks and gradually push the bots down to Bronze where they belong. But if past experience is an indicator, that would take far too long to play out 'naturally', with the current reward structure and card upgrade requirements. To illustrate the point - we are nearly halfway through the Untamed print run and it is evident that the player base hasn't matured to the point where level 1 bots can be pushed even out of Champ II. I can appreciate the proposed solution to apply DEC collection scores to function as cutoffs between leagues, but the most enduring and effective solution ultimately is a larger and more mature (deck-wise) player base. At least from that perspective, the game is heading in the right direction.

It raises an interesting thought about what the next set of cards might look like given the leap up in power level with the Untamed set. The supposed drawback of the increased power level in the form of higher mana requirements has in my mind been more than offset by the corresponding increase in mana caps for battles so that new players have an opportunity to play their high-powered cards.

Don't get me wrong, the high mana cap battles are fun to plan for. But in my estimation they are allowed to happen far too often to make the (generally lower mana) cards of the Alpha and Beta series very compelling to new players (especially with how much more expensive they are in $ terms). But it is sensible that this would be the sort of outcome the developers would want to see. Newer sets generally need to be stronger (or qualitatively different in the form of new gameplay mechanics) than older sets to make people buy the newer set. I don't always love the change, but I'm willing to adapt.

It does makes game balance very tough (if not impossible) - being a natively digital game that has all the gameplay data from every battle freely available to be analysed and scrutinized, any advantage or imbalance however slight will be quickly and ruthlessly exploited in a way that wasn't possible with traditional games. It makes me appreciate the ruleset combinations a lot more than I used to, since this feature really helps to 'hide' a lot of balance issues by introducing randomness and (for some rulesets) inverting the power levels of cards to turn gameplay on its head - 'reverse speed' being an example of one of those rulesets.

... this is far more than what I'd expected to write in a post that is about me bragging about reaching Champ I. Time to get back to work!